A Year in the Life of a Colonial Land

Massachusetts: The members of the Massachusetts council who conducted the examinations of Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor the preceding day in Salem Town order Cloyce and Proctor, along with Proctor’s husband John, accused of witchcraft during the examination, and the previously accused witches Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey and Dorothy Good, sent to jail in Boston. Although in previous instances jailing the accused had usually resulted in a respite from the sufferings of the afflicted, in this case there is nothing of the sort. Indeed, Samuel Parris, minister in Salem Village, while trying to write a report on the afflictions suffered by his niece Abigail Williams, his slave John Indian, and Mary Walcott, another of the afflicted girls, all of whom are at his house, keeps getting interrupted by John and Abigail falling into fits and complaining of being tortured by the Proctors and Cloyce, until eventually he has to send them out of the room so he can finish. Once he does finish the report, Mary Walcott, who has spent most of this time quietly knitting, suddenly cries out that she sees the apparitions of all of the accused witches being sent to Boston and that John Proctor is about to choke her, and she then falls down as if being choked.